Then-Junior Senator John F. Kennedy (center) visited Westfield for a Democratic campaign event on September 29, 1958. (Photo by Robert G. Watson, used with permission of Carol Saltus)
WESTFIELD – The Good Table Restaurant on School Street was a hub of activity earlier this month, a cohesive mixture of seniors, 30-something’s and their young families, and a few college kids playing hooky from their Macroeconomics course.
Seated at a window table on the left side of the front door, Mark Dunn peered outside, his coffee getting cold, thinking back to where he was 50 years ago, when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
“I was a sophomore at McCann Tech that year,” said Dunn, who grew up in North Adams, but has resided in Westfield for several years now. “Someone knocked on the door of our history class and pulled the teacher outside. He came back inside to tell us the President had been shot. The room was quiet as could be. You couldn’t hear a peep on the bus ride home.”
The four other gentlemen who join Dunn in his daily coffee hour pondered the past as they sipped their java, trying to recollect where they were and what they were doing on that fateful fall day.
“I was living in Barbados at the time, in the process of getting my drivers license when I heard,” said one man, his eyes blank, as if the thought of that day had cast a spell, turning his face to stone.
“I was working second shift at the Old Colony Envelope Company, so I didn’t hear about it till later,” said Sheldon Faunce of Westfield. “The news eventually spread around, but it wasn’t like today when people hear things right when they happen.”
“I was working as a meat cutter at the Silver Street Supermarket when it came on the radio,” said Milton Holmes of Westfield. “I’ll never forget it.”
Word of their conversation spread throughout the restaurant, similar to coffee after it spills on Mom’s white suede sofa.
Then-Junior Senator John F. Kennedy (center) visited the H.B. Smith Company in Westfield for a Democratic campaign event on September 29, 1958 flanked by then-Westfield Mayor Alice Burke, right. (Photo by Robert G. Watson, used with permission of Carol Saltus)
“I was in the sixth grade at St. Mary’s,” said Kathy Nielsen, who was just settling in for lunch with her mother when the conversation came up. “I was taking the bus home, and all the high school kids were crying. I asked them what they were crying about and they were told not to tell me.”
Her mother was working in a beauty shop at the time when it came over the radio.
“I was working in Terry Shaw’s beauty shop, upstairs from the Third National Bank when I heard,” said Therese Duclos between sips of coffee. “The whole country shut off for a week.”
Her daughter recalled visiting a friend, the daughter of a city policeman, and witnessing something she’d never seen before.
“I had never seen a man cry,” Nielsen said. “I was visiting my friend Margie, and her father Mr. Shea, was in the basement, bawling at the television. I was young though, so I didn’t understand the whole situation.”
Another city man, Rich Roos, was all set to indulge in a stack of Belgian waffles before overhearing talk of November 22, 1963.
“I was just having a regular day, I don’t remember what class it was,” said Roos, who, like Dunn, was a high school sophomore at the time, only at Westfield High. “School teachers came around to tell us, and we couldn’t believe it had happened. How could something so bad happen when there was all that security around him?”
Several folks mentioned their personal conspiracy theories about the assassination, but for the most part, reflection was focused on the charismatic leader who was taken far too soon.
“I couldn’t watch TV for a week,” Duclos said. “It was a tragic loss. He was the quite the President.”
One city man was away at boarding school when tragedy struck Camelot.
“I remember my father was working in the Caribbean and sent a newspaper from the small town on the island he was working on,” the man said. “I opened the package and saw in 90-point print “Kennedy assassinated” in Spanish.”
“At first we didn’t believe it, that the President had been shot and killed,” he said. “But later in the day when we were out of class, they played the National Anthem over a loudspeaker on campus. And that’s when we knew.”
Other folks around the city recalled being sent home from their Catholic schools during the school day following the death of the first, and so far, only, Catholic President.
“We didn’t go back to school until after the funeral,” one woman recalled, as the nuns at her school instructed the students to go home and pray.
In Westfield, military veterans recalled that day with stunning clarity.
“I was in basic training at Lowry Air Force base in Denver. We were sitting in a class for the electronics on B-52’s,” said Lynn Boscher. “9:00 or 10:00 their time was when we found out. Everything locked down. We didn’t know if we were going to war of what. I can picture where I was to this exact day.”
Area luminaries in the Democratic Party, who pinned their hopes and dreams on the man who remains the youngest man ever to be elected President, were shocked by what transpired in Texas that afternoon.
Dick Sullivan, a retired teacher whose son Rick is a former Democrat Mayor of Westfield and current Secretary of Energy and Environmental Services for the state, was working as the Vice Principal at Greenfield Junior High School at the time, and remembers it clear as day.
“We had had a disagreement with a parent regarding transportation of a student and the distance between their home and the school,” said Sullivan. “That afternoon, I was in the back of a station wagon being driven by the Superintendent, dragging a tape measure to measure the distance.”
On the way back to the school, Sullivan remembers a car being driven by the angry parent approaching with it’s window down.
“I said to the Superintendent ‘that’s the woman’. She asked us if we have our radio on,” Sullivan said. “When we said we didn’t, she said ‘the President has been assasinated.'”
At around 2:00 p.m, Sullivan got back to the school, which was three stories tall and didn’t have a PA system.
“There was a dance scheduled for that evening, and I ran through the halls informing the students that it was going to be cancelled,” he said. “My wife, my three kids at the time, and I were glued to the TV that week.”
When asked of the lasting impact Kennedy’s death has had on the nation, Sullivan doesn’t think there is a shred of doubt about it’s effect.
“My wife and I were in our mid-twenties at that time, and it deeply affected us,” he said. “It changed our optimism. He did so much, the Peace Corps, going to the moon. It shocked our generation. It was a horrific tragedy.”
